Books read in 2016

Random book. Photo: Daniel Wehner (CC BY 2.0)

The book year of 2016

2016 was pretty productive in terms of the quantitative as well as qualitative aspect of reading. As of 31 December 2016, I read altogether 52 books, amounting to over 10,000 pages. Below you’ll find a listing of some of the novels, short stories and other books I read. Most of the non-fictional works that I had the pleasure of reading are not included.

Zoshchenko: Kireähermoista väkeä (Nervous People and Other Satires, ca. 1927/1990)

Isherwood: Mr Norris Changes Trains (1935)

Lovecraft: At the Mountains of Madness (1936)

Orwell: Homage to Catalonia (1938)

Greene: The Confidential Agent (1939)

Steinbeck: Once There Was a War (originally published in 1943 as individual war reports)

Simak: City (1952)

Bradbury: The Golden Apples of the Sun (1953)

Dick: The Golden Man (1954)

Christopher: The Death of Grass (1956)

Dick: Vulcan’s Hammer (1960)

Greene: A Burnt Out Case (1960)

Lem: Rymdpiloten Pirx (Pirx the Pilot, 1961)

Dick: Martian Time-Slip (1964)

Delany: Babel-17 (1966)

Lem: Peace on Earth (1967)

Lem: His Master’s Voice (1968)

Zoshchenko: The Galosh: Selected Comic Short Stories (1968)

Bradbury: I Sing the Body Electric!: And Other Stories (1969)

Lee: As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning (1969)

Dick: Our Friends from Frolix 8 (1970)

Strugatsky brothers: Kasvatti (Malysh, 1971)

Strugatsky brothers: The Ugly Swans (1972)

Ballard: Crash (1973)

Dovlatov: The Zone: A Prison Camp Guard’s Story (1982)

Dovlatov: Pushkin Hills (1983)

Huovinen: Puukansan tarina (1984)

Strugatsky brothers: The Time Wanderers (1984)

Lem: One Human Minute (1986)

Banks: Consider Phlebas (1987)

Greene: The Captain and the Enemy (1988)

Pelevin: Omon Ra (1992)

Pelevin: Hyönteiselämää (The Life of Insects, 1993)

Bryson: I’m a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America after Twenty Years Away (1998)

Platonov: The Return and Other Stories (1998)

Gibson: All Tomorrow’s Parties (1999)

Pelevin: Kauhukypärä (The Helmet of Horror, 2005)

Wilson: What They Always Tell Us (2008)

Bradbury: We’ll Always Have Paris (2009)

Stewart: The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Presents Earth (The Audiobook): A Visitor’s Guide to the Human Race (2010)

North: The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August (2014)

So, a lot of Bradbury, Dick, Lem, Pelevin and the Strugatsky brothers! Claire North’s The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August was a refreshing sample of contemporary science fiction by a very talented author. And I’m so glad I finally picked up William Gibson’s All Tomorrow’s Parties. It’s so great to find new gems of literature. Gibson’s Neuromancer is now also on the to-read list. Cyberpunk rules 🙂

#goodreads

“It’s funny. When we were alive we spent much of our time staring up at the cosmos and wondering what was out there. We were obsessed with the moon and whether we could one day visit it. The day we finally walked on it was celebrated worldwide as perhaps man’s greatest achievement. But it was while we were there, gathering rocks from the moon’s desolate landscape, that we looked up and caught a glimpse of just how incredible our own planet was. Its singular astonishing beauty. We called her Mother Earth. Because she gave birth to us, and then we sucked her dry.”~Jon Stewart, Earth (The Book): A Visitor’s Guide to the Human Race